Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Andy Taylor, a professor of political science at NC State. This post is part of our NC Knowledge List series, which taps into NC State’s expertise on all things North Carolina.
North Carolina has 100 counties and in our purple state every one of them can be crucial to the outcome of a statewide election. Remember, Roy Cooper won the governorship in 2016 by just 10,000 of the 4.7 million votes cast. But five counties seem particularly important and interesting these days. Here they are in no particular order…
Cumberland
Cumberland, the home of Fayetteville, has become a battleground county in our purple state. This doesn’t mean it has swing voters. It has a slightly smaller proportion of unaffiliated voters than the state as a whole, but many fewer than the handful of other large urban counties. This is a consequence of its large African-American population and huge military population. At 41 percent, no other large county, not even Durham, comes close in the proportion of registered voters who are black. And, as home to Fort Bragg, the biggest military base in the world, more than one-in-five residents of Cumberland are veterans – and these days veterans are going for Republicans by over 20 points. The county must go at least 55 percent for Democrats to win statewide. Unfortunately for the party, overall voter turnout in Cumberland was about eight percentage points lower than the state’s in 2016.
New Hanover
New Hanover, where Wilmington sits, isn’t quite the size of Cumberland. It’s in that second tier of counties by size, one that also includes Buncombe, Cabarrus, and Gaston. But of the top ten counties it is currently the one that most resembles a microcosm of North Carolina. Donald Trump won there in 2016…
